Accessibility's and regulation's mutual importance is the heart of Michael Waldman's 2014 book, The Second Amendment: A Biography, as summarized in editorial copy promoting the book:

The [Second] Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution, which relates to the right to bear arms,] was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men—who were required to own a gun to serve. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present. As the country spread to the Western frontier, violence spread too. But through it all, gun control was abundant. In the twentieth century, with Prohibition and gangsterism, the first federal control laws were passed.

Even in the days of the Wild West, an era's whose wildness in the popular imagination is almost synonymous with gunplay, there was regulation. It was common then for firearms to have to be checked upon one's entry into western towns. And the firearms were kept under lock and key. In fact, defiance of that practice contributed to the American Old West's most famous gunfight, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.

And the history of gun control in the U.S. has some interesting twists and turns.

For instance, in Winkler's article mentioned above, he contends that even more so than the NRA, the group that most fiercely advocated for the right to bear loaded weapons in public was the Black Panthers, who recognized the hypocrisy of white Americans who supported gun control measures based on fears of armed black Americans.

In general, I think that members of both the political left and right are sometimes disingenuous about, or not well aware of, the parts of the history of firearms in America that are most inconvenient to their arguments for or against gun control.

But in the remaining part of this post, I want to look at the slippery-slope argument by the National Rifle Association (NRA) against gun control. The NRA has opposed various types of gun control since the 1930s, but for decades now their opposition has been to virtually any form of gun regulation whatsoever. For the early history of the NRA's slippery-slope argument, see Pamela Haag's 2016 article in The Atlantic.

Slippery slope arguments are often but not always fallacious or weak. Links in such arguments' supposed chain of causality (If A occurs it will lead to Z, therefore, I oppose A) are often ridiculously numerous or not really directly interconnected at all. I think that that is the case with the NRA's argument.

But to be fair, my rebuttal to the NRA's argument is in part based on analogy, and arguments based on analogy are often considered weak by logicians.

My argument is this:

It's widely accepted that the right of free speech as established in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is sweeping but not absolute. The classic example is that the right of free speech is not unduly curtailed by outlawing the act of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Such an act too much endangers public safety.

In short, even freedom of speech, one of America's most cherished rights, is regulated. Yet no one fears that such regulation will lead inexorably to free speech being deeply compromised. It is unreasonable to think that a prohibition against shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater leads to, for instance, the U.S. government shutting down The New York Times and seizing its printing presses and computer servers.

Similarly, I believe many types of firearms regulations are sensible and will not inexorably lead to a profound weakening of the Second Amendment, often termed "the right to bear arms."

For instance, it cannot be reasonably argued that outlawing fully automatic weapons or bump stocks will lead to U.S. government officials raising Americans' homes to seize firearms. Notice that previous forms of firearms regulations that have since been reversed never led to anything even remotely like the confiscation of firearms. In fact, if regulation was so inherently threatening to the Second Amendment, how is it that the Second Amendment is now stronger than ever?

Yet the NRA regularly suggests that confiscation of weapons is the certain and final outcome of virtually any firearms regulation.

This is a fallacious slippery-slop argument rooted in fear-mongering, not in reason or in an intellectually-honest view of U.S. history, including American legal history.

Unfortunately, it seems that ideologically-inclined Americans accept that NRA's argument non-critically and will brook no compromise whatsoever regarding the firearms regulations.

I believe that this is in part because such Americans consume a right-wing media content and a great deal of NRA propaganda through NRA fund-raising letters and NRA publications like American Riflemen. Those publications include non-political content like product reviews, industry news, hunting tales, histories, etc., but the editorials, some ads, and some articles often imply or cry out over-the-top warnings about the U.S. government's supposed desire to regulate firearms almost out of existence.

It might be asked, why are such scare tactics needed in the first place if—as the NRA also says—the clear and obvious meaning of the Second Amendment is that each American has an inviolable right to own virtually any weapon they want. Apparently, an argument based on not only legal precedent, like the recent Supreme Court ruling of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), but the witness of American history (as noted earlier in this post) won't suffice. Might that be because the Second Amendment's meaning may be less clear than the NRA would like. It reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The truth is that "a well regulated Militia" is a problematic qualifier for many Second Amendment ideologues.

Nonetheless, legal precedent and U.S. history strongly indicate that guns will remain readily available in most states probably for as long as the Unites States of America exists.

Yet the hysteria from the NRA and many Americans remains. They seem absolutely addicted to it.

Generally speaking, guns in American aren't going away, whatever the NRA and their radical supporters say. So it is not inherently a threat to gun ownership in general to impose new regulations on firearms. This is especially given how technology keeps increasing firearms' lethality, becoming it a matter of public health and a matter of increased risks to law enforcement personnel. (Also, increased danger to law enforcement personnel can create a kind of arms race between potential criminal actors, including home-grown terrorists, and the police. The police in turn escalate their own firepower and further militarize their kit, which many Americans are very uncomfortable with.)

As it relates to firearms, I'm not as far to the left as most of my fellow urban Democrats. I believe in the private citizen's right to self-defense in general and do not support a nation-wide handgun ban. I grew up with firearms in the house and fired my own small-caliber firearms until my college years. But I definitely support stricter regulations—especially in urban environments for reasons that I think are obvious.

The regulatory proposals for firearms that I find most sensible and believe that intellectually-honest gun owners realize are not actually a threat to gun ownership—despite the wolf-crying, hyperventilating warnings of the NRA and surrogates enamored of conspiracy theories about the U.S. government—are those that

We're a 24/7 Trump republic. What percentage of the USA's population at least knows of and will probably in the next 24 hours meaningfully comprehend mention of the name Donald Trump? It's got to be more than 90% of those who're conscious. (We'll definitely cut some slack for the 6% of Americans under the age of 5.)

Donald J. Trump, 69-year-old native New Yorker, billionaire real estate magnate, and television personality, is vying—surprisingly strongly—to become the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. The breadth, depth, and longevity of his support among voters surprised the vast majority of political commentators, prognosticators, and historians.

Here are samples from some recent online opinions and observations about what Trump's popularity means. I think it's safe to say that most if not all of them represent left-of-center perspectives, but some call on more data than others.

[A new wave of] authoritarian populists have been with us now for 20 years, in economically bad times as well as good, in both predominately Catholic and Protestant societies, in Nordic and Mediterranean regions, in liberal Norway and conservative Switzerland, in egalitarian welfare states as well as unequal societies, in the European Union and in several Anglo-American democracies like New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. Why?

We’re seeing a deep and strong a cultural backlash against changes in social values.......By giving voice to and amplifying fears of cultural change, the Republicans [in the USA] have opened the way for a populist leader. Trump’s support appears to be fueled by a backlash among traditionalists...faced with rising American support for issues such as gay marriage, sexual equality, and tolerance of social diversity, all lumped under the phrase “political correctness.”

[B]y the most commonly accepted measures, the voters who look most authoritarian are not those following Trump but those following Cruz. Not only do they score highest on the authoritarian scales, they also have that combination of populist elements correlated most strongly with authoritarianism. They are mistrustful of intellectuals and experts, highly nationalistic, yet strongly aligned with political and economic elites.

We cannot ignore the fact that the populist sensation of this election hasn’t been Bernie Sanders. It’s been a racist, nationalist demagogue-for-hire with no sincere ideology beyond his own vanity. Mr. Trump is a cipher; his voters love him because he does nothing but hold up a mirror to their basest prejudices and bask in the feedback loop of narcissism. They’re not “afraid”; they’re leading Mr. Trump as much as following him. They called him into being, not the other way around.

America is terrible at giving its citizens dignity and meaning. We have, with the internet, the power for more people to be appreciated than ever before, yet we use it primarily to shame each other. Shaming Trump supporters for being “ignorant bigots” is the worst thing you can do, because their entire motivation in voting for Trump is to alleviate the shame they are already carrying. If you add to their shame, they will dig in further.

"Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why," by Thomas Frank, Guardian online, US edition, Opinion, March 7, 2016, notes that a study of "working-class voters in the suburbs of Cleveland and Pittsburgh in December and January" by Working America found support for Donald Trump ran strong among even self-identified Democratic respondents

not because they are all pining for a racist in the White House. Their favorite aspect of Trump was his “attitude”, the blunt and forthright way he talks. As far as issues are concerned, “immigration” placed third among the matters such voters care about, far behind their number one concern: “good jobs / the economy”.

“People are much more frightened than they are bigoted,” is how the findings were described to me by Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America.

"The Rise of American Authoritarianism," Amanda Taub, Vox.com, March 1, 2016, notes that University of Massachusetts Amherst PhD student Matthew MacWilliams found that authoritarianism "seemed to predict support for Trump more reliably than virtually any other indicator." And, Taub states, University of North Carolina political scientist Jonathan Weiler and Vanderbilt University professor Marc Hetherington unwittingly predicted the rise of a candidate like Trump when concluding in their 2009 book that:

Much of the polarization dividing American politics was fueled not just by gerrymandering or money in politics or the other oft-cited variables, but by an unnoticed but surprisingly large electoral group — authoritarians.... [T]he GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.

In short, authoritarianism is largely latent until triggered. Authoritarians, latent or otherwise,

are much more susceptible to messages that tell them to fear a specific "other". [They] feel threatened by people they identify as "outsiders" and by the possibility of changes to the status quo makeup of their communities..... [They more likely] will seek...a strong leader who promises to suppress the scary changes, if necessary by force[, including force by the federal government], and to preserve the status quo......Just as striking is what was missing from authoritarians' concerns. There was no clear correlation between authoritarianism and support for tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 per year, for example. And the same was true of support for international trade agreements.

But why Trump specifically, according to Taub and others?

Trump's specific policies aren't the thing that most sets him apart from the rest of the field of GOP candidates. Rather, it's his rhetoric and style. The way he reduces everything to black-and-white extremes of strong versus weak, greatest versus worst. His simple, direct promises that he can solve problems that other politicians are too weak to manage[, and] his willingness to flout all the conventions of civilized discourse when it comes to the minority groups [who] authoritarians find so threatening.... He is sending a signal to his authoritarian supporters that he won't let "political correctness" hold him back from attacking the outgroups they fear.

So, is it about fear of outsiders, which for some Trump supporters may include even the current President of the United States? Or shame and anger at being economically left behind? Or anxiety about personal economic future? Or is it mostly just Trump's brash rhetorical style? Is it cultural backlash? Is Trump's rise a mostly regional phenomenon? Is it none of the above and something else altogether or a bit of all of the above? Is Trump a one-off or an indication of candidates to come? How key is today's media environment in his rise? It'll be interesting to hear what historians and political scientists say about it all 20 years from now.

In politics, a day can sometimes be a lifetime. A career can be made or ruined in an instant. Things can change fast. The political landscape can sometimes be radically altered by a sudden, surprising event, national or global, political or cultural, economic or military, private or public. Or not. Making predictions about the implications of Trump's current popularity is mostly a guessing game right now, and probably so are many analyses of his rise.

Famed neurosurgeon, author, and Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson feels under attack from the media and liberals. He blames this in part on being a black American who doesn't hold to socially liberal or economically progressive views. The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart notes that Carson's critics are reacting to bigoted and incendiary comments that the candidate's made.

In April 2013, Carson linked gays to pedophiles and “people who believe in bestiality.” His attempted explanation to NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell led to a ridiculous “That’s not an orange. …That’s a banana” analogy that still makes no sense. In October 2013, he famously said, “You know, Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

And:

“the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.”

“I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary.” The Adversary is a nickname for the devil; it’s the actual translation of the word “Satan.”.....He also dismissed the Big Bang, calling it a “fairy tale.”

Carson proves that to be a brain surgeon you don't exactly have to be a rocket scientist. Or any kind of scientist, frankly. You have to have a certain degree or quality of native intelligence and aptitude (including the highly admirable ability to concentrate for long periods of time), be extremely knowledgeable about various and highly technical specialist fields, and have far above average eye-hand coordination.

Carson has all of these things, and other skills and strengths besides. But surgeons are not by definition scientists...or for that matter economic, foreign, or energy policy experts. That's partially how it's possible for Carson to believe a half-dozen idiotic things every day between breakfast and lunch, including that somehow the Theory of Evolution is not true, that it is wrong despite its formal status alongside the Germ Theory of Disease (which he undoubtedly knows something about though probably less than an infectious disease specialist does), the Theories of Special and General Relativity, and the Theory of Plate Tectonics.

Carson clearly has the intelligence to author books, win numerous awards and distinctions including the Presidential Medal of Freedom he was honored with in 2008 for accomplishments in his field, to navigate political debates and interviews (with mixed results), and to fund-raise and organize as he did for hospitals and medical research—skills likely helping his political campaign, too.

But none of that exempts him from simultaneously being gullible and misinformed about a host of matters vital to the republic's governance, as well as certain matters key to a proper understanding of observable reality.

And none of his intelligence or skills, as Jonathan Capehart notes, exempt him from holding incendiary and ignorant ideas and spouting them—even as he does so in his slow, soft-spoken, modulated way (almost like he's drowsy), which is in part the reason for his popularity; it is admittedly a change, probably welcomed by many voters, for a politician to not be thundering and podium-pounding all of the time or pronouncing in affected gravitas—a specialty of Carson's fellow candidate Sen. Ted Cruz. But ignorant and incendiary comments aren't less ignorant and incendiary just because they're given in bassoon tones instead of trumpeted flourishes.

Isebrand.com turned 10 years old in January 2014. I wouldn't have expected anyone to notice.... But even I didn't! That's a bit pathetic. :)

Below is the first post, "Why This Site," that I published. Most of the links are dead. (Also, above is a screen cap (click to enlarge) of the top portion of the blog's first page. It's in my digital archives, not online anymore.

OK, I admit that I'm a tad impressed that a decade ago I was blogging about wealth disparity and the top 1%. Maybe I was a bit ahead of the curve. Frankly, they're topics I moved away from over time, though they're certainly on my mind again nowadays.

I launched Isebrand.com on January 7, 2004. It was entirely focused on U.S. politics and done in HTML. If TypePad or WordPress existed back then, I didn't know about them. What's annoying is that I went from several hundred daily unique visitors on average (getting more than 5,000 daily during the week of the 2004 General Election and the day after) to 100s fewer once I switched to TypePad in 2006. All of a sudden many followers couldn't find my blog as easily and it seemed lost to search engines.

Now, Isebrand.com 2.0, as it were, is just a sort of scrapbook of Web snippets, more likely to be about the UK or British history or a good cocktail recipe. On an extremely good day, I might get 200-300 visitors but that's rare; merely 50-80 unique visitors is more common.

If my initial post's tone seems angry, it's because I was. 9/11 and its aftermath showed the spitefulness of G. W. Bush and the GOP. I found the Republican Party's demagogic lies during the 2002 midterm campaigns to be utterly unconscionable. To successfully insinuate that the likes of Max Cleland and other Congressional Democrats were potentially traitorous or dangerous for opposing a rush into a war of choice against Iraq, a nation not involved in 9/11, almost literally sickened me. It sickened me that the GOP dared to do such knavish things and that so many voters bought into it.

By late 2003, I was part of the Draft Clark movement and agreed with Gore Vidal--now the late Gore Vidal (and I still agree with him on this)--that George W. Bush's administration was one of the worst to ever befall the republic, largely a calculating and grotesquely cynical cabal bent on warmongering globally for personal profit and glory, stirring up the religious right domestically, and deliberately spending while cutting taxes in order to cause a crisis of debt that could be used as an excuse to undo the New Deal.

My late and beloved Aunt Ardith Buffington was among the sweetest and least judgmental people I've ever had the privilege to know. She was not very political. I remember being taken aback when she somewhat sharply declared once to me and my uncle when President George W. Bush appeared on the television screen, maybe in 2005 or 2006, "Oo, when I see his face, I just want to slap him." There was something about that man. Not just the policies but the swagger, the smirk, the seeming lack of serious-mindedness, that could cause strong antipathy. In general, I think it was often warranted, and while I am usually good about avoiding the ad hominem these days (guideline: "attack the idea, the message, not the person or messenger") and think it is an important principle, back then on Isebrand.com, I often referred to the President as a "frat punk."

BECAUSE the wealthiest 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95%combined;BECAUSE the president threw away a $237 billion government surplus, leaving America no emergency funds;BECAUSE his imprudence has given us a $400 billion deficit;BECAUSE he feeds wealth disparity with tax give-aways that help the rich, force service cutsfor the rest of us, and drive state and community taxes up;

BECAUSE on January 28, 2003 the president lied to America before Congress assembled;BECAUSE he exploited the 9/11 tragedy to start an unrelated war, and deceived Americans to gain their support.BECAUSE his war is diverting money and immeasurable resources from the fight against terrorism;BECAUSE his warmongering showed contempt for our allies and squandered their goodwill;BECAUSE he protects officials who treasonously betrayed an American intelligent agent;BECAUSE he and his staff censorinformationand withhold from the American public even basic facts about their secretgovernance;

BECAUSE his environmental record is the worst of any president in American history.

BECAUSE the grassroots campaigns of Howard Deanand Wesley Clark offer the hope of a resurgent Democratic Party;BECAUSE Democrats are finally recognizing the need for better political communication;BECAUSE grassroots organizations like MoveOn.org show that the Internet can help defend the republic and its constitution;

1970s anxieties about inflation [are being substituted by] today's concerns about the emergence of the plutocratic rich and their impact on economy and society. [Economist Thomas] Piketty is in no doubt, as he indicates in an interview in today's Observer New Review, that the current level of rising wealth inequality, set to grow still further, now imperils the very future of capitalism. He has proved it.

Wealth inequality rises as 1) return on capital rises faster than both workers' wages and general economic growth (see chart #1, click to enlarge, and for more on the related issue of decreasing income mobility in the U.S. see "Inequality Is Not the Problem", Jeff Madrick, NYR Blog, 2014 ),2) super-high-income workers (e.g., CEOs) reward each other with mega-salaries to "keep up with the other rich" (see chart #2 from "We're More Unequal Than You Think", The New York Review of Books, 2012),3) inherited wealth and corporate gains aren't greatly taxed (compared to the early post-WWII era especially), 4) tax-reduction/-avoidance schemes abound especially for the rich who can afford the experts to manage their money globally, and 5) the cultural and societal insularity of the wealthy, their disconnectedness from the vast majority of those who are not exceedingly wealthy, combines with their money-driven power (e.g., campaign contributions and armies of lobbyists) to keep the system in place. Such power puts me in mind of the old "golden rule"--he who has the gold makes the rules.

Importantly, due largely to #4 above, the middle class ends up with a disproportionate share of the tax burden to keep the social safety net, defense, services (sanitation, policing, fire fighting), education, and transportation infrastructure in place, even though the services, education, and infrastructure benefit the mega-wealthy, too, directly or indirectly.

The result: it becomes more important who you're born to than what job you have or even what business you create. In the situation Piketty describes, not even typical entrepreneurs can ever expect to gain close to the kind of wealth that the rentier class will enjoy, will see grow (faster than will grow wages or the general economy), and will pass on to offspring...largely untaxed.

It might be noted, too, that with the middle-class's retirement funds so tired up in stocks due to the financial innovation of the 401k, the super-rich can use political rhetoric that suggests they and simple shareholders are on the same team, which they are not.

Another key point of Piketty's book is that the mid-20th-century period of reduced wealth inequality and reduced income inequality is the exception, not the rule, because, as a friend of mine summarized, the disruptions of two world wars and the Great Depressions hugely reduced the capital controlled by the upper classes both through direct destruction and by making very high taxation politically possible. (See that plunge in the rate of return on chart #1 above, 1913–1950.)

Stating that capitalism isn't working is not the same as stating that capitalism doesn't work. Piketty seems to promote a mixed economy. As I think it is better understood by the voting public in much of Europe (perhaps especially Germany and the Scandinavian countries) than in the U.S., there is no strict, binary choice between socialism and capitalism. There are myriad gradations in between the two. Capitalism's tendency toward a final winner-take-all result can be curtailed and social unrest kept at bay by policies such as more progressive taxation, global wealth taxes, etc. However, these tactics are not practicable now. Outrage among the voting majority simply isn't great enough to precipitate change. And all of this is hard to tweet, so good luck getting anyone under the age of 30 to give a damn.

Piketty's book stems from many years of work and research. It will take some time for challenges to emerge robustly, but some are already published. Examples include these considerations via Forbes.com. (Scroll down on the linked-to page for additional Forbes posts by Tom Worstall and Scott Winship about possible problems with some of Piketty's ideas. For instance, Worstall suggests that taxation on consumption is a better approach than Piketty's suggestion to tax capital.)

Slightly off-topic but not entirely unrelated: As others have pointed out, one of the factors driving the Scottish independence referendum (September 18, 2014), which I think will pass by a very slim margin, is a laudable consensus among the Scots that they do not want the kind of radical wealth inequality seen in England and the U.S.A. (See, "Scottish nationalists look to Nordic model for independence", Financial Times.) However, whether independence is the best course for lessening or protecting again wealth inequality is arguable. (Personally, I side with Better Together campaign.) The Conservatives who support continued union with Scotland may go down in history as the party that led the Government that lost the 307-year-old union between Scotland and the rest of Britain and [Northern] Ireland, despite their strenuous rhetorical efforts to preserve it. We'll find out in less that 5 months' time.

The Koch Brothers

Also, it is interesting to look in light of Piketty's book at the efforts of the billionaire economic conservative Koch brothers to have surcharges put upon users of solar power. Piketty notes that the very wealthy will engage in various efforts to maintain the status quo, no doubt. As Piketty writes, "The experience of France in the Belle Époque proves, if proof were needed, that no hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interest."

The assessment of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist David Horsey in his regular "Top of the Ticket" column in the Los Angeles Times is that

the Koch brothers have a new ploy to protect the traditional energy business that helped make them the planet’s fifth- and sixth-richest humans. They are funding a campaign to shackle solar energy consumers who have escaped the grip of big electric utilities.

Of all the pro-business, anti-government causes they have funded with their billions, this may be the most cynical and self-serving.

(Click any image in this post to enlarge it.)

It seems to me that the mega-wealthy, like the Koch brothers, will happily and doggedly seek to further game the system and entrench their wealth through tax havens, low tax rates, falsehoods widely disseminated by their media operations--complete with crocodile tears for the middle class--and the political and societal influence that they buy through campaign contributions, armadas of lobbyists, and, frankly, their "charitable" giving, too. (To give a large donation to an arts institution or medical facility not only offers tax advantages but in a sense puts those entities' workers in your pocket; they daren't speak out or too obviously work to reform the status quo lest they lose a big-money donor, patron, lord.) Those with great wealth will work both to rig the system and to keep the masses' outrage at bay by fueling the narrative of the government as being the only true enemy, by fueling misinformation against whatever hurts their interests, including--in the case of the Koch brothers especially--climate change, and by fueling media coverage of and political focus on non-economic issues.

In the U.S., with the decrease in the public intensity of religious conservatives' concerns about social issues and, arguably, social conservatives dwindling numbers, the economic right-wing (and the self-described libertarian wing) of the U.S. will increasingly attack government in all its forms and experiment with new distractions. Old distractions like gay marriage or the war on drugs are losing their appeal. New ones will be found.

I suspect that the super-massively rich, the top 0.01%, like the Koch brothers, convince themselves that they are patriots. But they ignore the simple fact that liberty as outlined in our republic's founding documents is meant to work alongside--variously in cooperation or in tension with--the Constitution's explicitly stated purpose, among others, to PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE. I believe that the Koch brothers' efforts subvert the general welfare, and in that regard they really are more like oligarchic monarchists, insiders in the lordly court of plutocracy, than true champions of liberty.

I was intrigued by a recent segment on Up w/ Steve Kornacki that was a retrospective on Rep. Jack Kemp (1935–2009) within the context of new Republican Party outreach efforts to racial minorities.

I met Jack Kemp three or four times in 1988 in Iowa while he was campaigning for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. I was the founding President of the Kossuth County Teenage Republicans and wanted the GOP's nomination to go to either George H. W. Bush, then Vice-President under Ronald Reagan, or Congressman Kemp who represented New York's 38th District, a long-standing GOP New York "Eastern Establishment" stronghold (since 1939). It was represented in 1959–1963 by Jessica M. Weis (in 1948 she was the first woman to second the nomination for a presidential candidate by doing so for Thomas E. Dewey at the national convention in Philadelphia) and in 1963–1968 by liberal Republican Charles Goodell.

I went from teenage Republican to Democrat by the time I was old enough to register to vote and in less than a handful of years. In the late 1980's, my interest in politics was an end in and of itself. Politics for me wasn't entirely or even mainly about ideology except insofar as I was something of a Cold War warrior in mentality. I liked realpolitik internationalist types who fit a sort of JFK-shaped mold I had in mind. To me, Bush and Kemp fit that mold. Certainly, one of their competitors for the party's nomination did not: Pentecostal television preacher Pat Robertson. I found him totally off-putting. But Robertson would go on to place second in the Iowa Caucuses with 25% of the vote behind Rep. Bob Dole with 37%. Bush and Kemp garnered 19% and 11% respectively.

Robertson's success, though short-lived within the '88 nomination cycle itself, was a sign of things to come for the GOP. I know exactly when I started to dislike Pat Robertson and it pre-dated his run for office. Though I couldn't have known it at the time, the moment that I came to thoroughly dislike Robertson was also a small but very sure step--perhaps the first--along a path to Democratic Party membership. It was when I heard Robertson gravely warn of the Satanic nature of the game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Yep.

It was during a broadcast of the 700 Club, a religious television show he hosted on his own network. The show usually included a heavy emphasis on politics, human interest stories, and Robertson's prophecies. He also miraculously healed unnamed people through their television screens, sometimes of hemorrhoids.

It's an unlikely sort of political consciousness-raising moment. But, it was telling: Robertson was a public political figure, a leader of the religious right-wing, and therefore strongly focused on societal issues...even tabletop games. I had played role-playing games similar to D&D, and what Robertson said that evening on the 700 Club, like countless other of his comments before and since, was asinine. But, stunningly, Republicans in the future would later beat Robertson on the asininity scale: charges of Bill Clinton "body counts," cries of Affordable Care Act "death panels," conspiracy theories of Barack Obama being a foreign-born crypto-Muslim, and--along the way--other everything from Tinky Winky's purple triangular antenna to SpongeBob SquarePants's supposed gay agenda.

Robertson was the future of the GOP mindset that would be fuelled further by conservative PACs and think tanks as well as a conservative media echo chamber that includes sermons and conversations in conservative evangelical churches and Bible studies, and the massive conservative Christian media empire spanning radio, television, print, and online. The likes of Jack Kemp would become fewer. And not because Kemp was liberal, either. He was no liberal. But because Kemp's social conservatism was actually interested in governance, policy, and notions of community. He was comfortable with racial diversity. He understood the importance of America's cities. He was also a happy warrior. His work for conservative ideals was not based in anger or resentment. These qualities certainly wouldn't sit well with today's Tea Party.

From the religious right of the 1980s to the Tea Party of today is not as long or as complicated of a political evolutionary path as you might think. Studies by Pew and other institutions and academics have revealed the close connection between the Tea Party and the religious right-wing.* Tea Party leaders stress that the movement is about libertarianism. Maybe it is, to a point, but look just under the surface and it's often much about social conservatism, too.

Before Kemp, liberal Republican Charles Goodell had been ousted from that same Congressional seat by a challenger from the right. Kemp's election solidified the district's solidly conservative Republican reputation. But, nowadays, Kemp himself would probably be in the cross-hairs of the Tea Party. Kemp just wasn't the sort to despise a president or government so much as to shout "You lie!" during our republic's head of state's annual address to Congress.

Maybe the religious right's best days are behind it, and maybe the Tea Party movement has crested, too. John Boehner certainly seems fed-up with it. And Politico is asking, "Is Paul Ryan the GOP's Next Jack Kemp?" We'll see.

Rev. Randall Balmer, Mandel Family Professsor of Arts & Sciences at Dartmouth College and chairman of Dartmouth's religion department, recently spoke at Zion Episcopal Church in Manchester, VT. A scholar of Protestantism's history in the United States, Balmer makes an important point about the origins of the religious right-wing political movement, as reported by Mark E. Rondeu (@banner_religion) in the Bennington Banner:

It is widely believe that evangelicals turned against Carter and toward the Republicans because of abortion, legalized in the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. Balmer calls this "the abortion myth."

Instead he pointed to a lower court ruling which upheld the contention by the Internal Revenue Service that "any organization that engages in racial segregation or racial discrimination is not by definition a charitable organization. Therefore it has no claims on tax-exempt status, and similarly any donations to such an organizations can no longer qualify for tax exemption," Balmer said.

This was used by the IRS in 1975 to rescind the tax exemption of Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist school in Greenvile, S.C., which did not admit African Americans to the student body until 1971 and until 1975, out of fears of racial mixing, did not admit unmarried African Americans.

"That is what got people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the other leaders of the religious right activated as political players in order to reverse those actions against these schools," he said. "That was the catalyst for the Religious Right. Abortion did not become part of the religious right agenda until 1979."

Balmer also spoke to American voters' and the media's over-reliance on questioning politicians about their religion.

"Part of the problem, I think, in the American political process is that in America religion serves as a proxy for morality," Balmer said. "Especially after the Nixon administration, we Americans want to know that our candidates for the highest office in the land are good, decent, moral, trustworthy people. The problem is we don't know how to ask the question, so we say: ‘are you religious? What is your religion?'

He added, "The flawed premise behind that question is that somebody who is not avowedly religious, or has no religious affiliation, cannot be a good, moral, decent person. That's demonstrably false."

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with Randall Balmer at Columbia's journalism school. I was considering attending "J School", and he was generous with his time and advice. I still recall the inspiring glimpse in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory--a documentary based on his book of the same title--of a Charismatic Episcopal Church.

Hear me ask my question to the panel of BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?this week. It will be broadcast online and on UK radio at 3:00 p.m. EDT (New York), 20:00 in the UK and available as a free podcast for download.* (Also available for free via iTunes.)

This week's panelists:

Sir Harold Evans of The Sunday Times, US News and World Report, The Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Daily News. In 1986 he founded Conde Nast Traveler. His book The American Century (1998) receiving particular acclaim. He is editor-at-large of The Week Magazine.

Former U.S. Rep. Nan Hayworth (NY 19th Congressional district) who may be considering a re-entry into politics. She was defeated in 2012 by Sean Patrick Maloney (who I've met several times over the course of years, as well as his partner Randy who is a fellow Hawkeye).

U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards (MD 4th Congressional district) who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2008 and sits on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

I attended a recording on the evening of April 18th, 2013, of one of my favorite radio shows, BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?, the world's longest-running radio panel discussion program, begun in 1948.** The show traveled across the pond to NYC this week to Columbia University's School of Journalism. Usually the show is broadcast live in the UK, and broadcast from a different location each week.

Attendees' questions are submitted ahead of time and selected by BBC staff. Panelists don't know ahead of time what the questions will be. For this taping, my question was one selected. I got to read my question aloud to the panel. For me this was very exciting.

The show has 3 million listeners a week, and it is part of my BBC Radio 4 triumvirate podcast I listen to each weekend--the other two programs being Friday Night Comedy (The News Quiz hosted by Sandi Toksvig and The Now Show with Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt) and In Our Time with host Melvyn Lord Bragg of Wigton.

*It's rebroadcast at 8:10 a.m. EDT on Saturday, 13:10 in the UK, too. Once archieved, it will be here.

Mr Romney won the white vote by 59% to 39%—an improvement over John McCain’s showing in 2008. But in Midwestern swing states, that margin was narrower: just four points in Wisconsin, for example, and 15 in Ohio......Over the course of his presidency, [Obama] has pointedly unveiled policies designed to appeal to each element of this coalition......Perhaps the best illustration of Mr Obama’s campaign-by-niches is his wooing of gay voters.
The 5% of voters who identified themselves as gay in exit polls opted for Mr Obama by 76% to 22%—enough to account for his entire margin of victory.

From The New Yorker -- a summing up of Washington's situation the last 50 years, in 340 words.

For the past generation or two, Washington has been the not so hallowed ground for a political war. This conflict resembles trench warfare, with fixed positions, hourly exchanges of fire, heavy casualties on both sides, and little territory gained or lost. The combatants wear red or blue, and their struggle is intensely ideological.

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in official Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

To Phyllis Schlafly and the New Right, this consensus amounted to liberalism, and in the nineteen-seventies they began to use guerrilla tactics--direct mail, single-issue pressure groups, right-wing think tanks, insurgent campaigns. By the nineties, conservatives had begun to take over the institutions of government. Liberals copied their success: the Heritage Foundation led to the Center for American Progress, the Moral Majority to People for the American Way, Bill O'Reilly to Keith Olbermann. The people Washington attracts now tend to be committed activists, who think of themselves as locked in an existential struggle over the fate of the country, and are unwilling to yield an inch of ground.

Meanwhile, another army has invaded Washington: high-priced influence peddlers working on behalf of corporations and the wealthy, seducing officials of both parties and daily routing the public interest. The War of Organized Money goes on almost unnoticed outside the capital, but the War Between the Colors reflects a real divide in the country, the sorting of Americans into ideologically separate districts and lives. From time to time, a looming disaster--such as the upcoming budget crisis--leads to negotiations and a brief truce. But the fighting never really stops.